I do actually still knit

Published June 17, 2012 by
Mae McDonnell

It’s true. I have been knitting. What I haven’t been doing is taking pictures of my knitting, so here’s a few.

I have my first handspun project that doesn’t stand up by itself. The fiber was 100% alpaca, which I bought at SOAR this year. I had four ounces of it, which didn’t quite give me enough yarn to finish the Georgiana Shawl from the first Jane Austen’s Knits. The shawl was designed for a thinner yarn than my homespun, so I got quite a different look than the one in the magazine. I had about 400 yards, which is what the pattern called for, so there’s an important lesson about homespun. It’s modeled on the lovely Kate, who needs to hurry up and move to New York already.

I also spent quite a bit of time on some socks of my own design, which I kept meaning to write the pattern down for, but have undoubtedly forgotten too many details to do it now. Still, I’d love to go back and design some fingerless mitts with this pattern, which rather unintentionally turned into a pretty traditional Celtic design. Anyone know what the little circles are called?

Beyond that, I’ve been working on another sock pattern that was chosen by my knitting circle. I’m well behind everyone else making the sock, but I’m okay with it. I was trying to practice cabling without a cable needle on them, but I did such a terrible job that I had to rip back the sock and redo the cables. Worth doing, though, as the result is much nicer and I would have regretted all of those mistakes forever. Of course, that means I’m still on my first sock, but it’s a much nicer sock.

I’ve also been trying to finish up my resubmits to the Knitting Guild of America’s Master’s Knitting program. I’m onto the project, which is a striped hat that I completely fussed the gauge on. It’s amazing how making the same hat you don’t want to wear twice will inspire you to really do it right – it’s been a great program for pointing out to me what I thought that I knew, but didn’t actually. My knitting has gotten much better and neater – and it turns out that I’m not the only knitter I know that doesn’t do her SSKs right…!